Ask my friends how many movies I used to watch every week.There was a time ,last year when I used to watch as many as 5 movies per week,most of them Night shows.Kiki was my movie partner and had a lot of adventures like being caught by the corrupt night policemen near the Madhya Kailash signal.We even used to watch movies continously.
- 7PM -9PM Journey to the Center of the Earth(English)
- 9:30PM-1:30AM A Wednesday (Hindi)
- 2 AM We were caught by a Corrupt Policeman while coming back at Madhya Kailash Signal
- 2:03 AM KIKI dials 100 to complain about the policeman who caught us
- 2:05 AM I give Rs.140/- to escape the cop before the other cop(whom kiki called for SOS)reach the spot
I give all the credit to the online booking system by sathyam cinemas at thecinema.in.We used to book the tickets at the end of day just an hour before the movie.The ‘Q’ was really DEAD.The website was intuitive and mostly flash based.We struggled a lot when we booked the movie tickets through mozilla , though the site worked like maska in IE browser.
It’s been around 8 months since I had visited Sathyam Cinemas though I have frequented Mayajaal , INOX and our own RAKKI [Ambattur’s biggest Multiplex 🙂 ].After a long time I wanted to watch a movie at Sathyam.I was planning to watch both ICE AGE on SATURDAY and TRANSFORMERS on SUNDAY.When I tried booking the ticket,I found the thecinema.in has undergone a complete transformation during the multiplex strike period.
The site is fully done in FLash.I suggest they could have had a LIGHTER version of the same site for people booking the tickets from low configuration systems.
Another major design fault in the site which screwed my weekend was WRONG colors chosen for the active tab in the ‘MAKE PAYMENT’ screen.Take a look at the thecinema.in’s MAKE PAYMENT screen below
PAYMENT THROUGH FUEL CARD OPTION
MAKE PAYMENT SCREEN -PAY THROUGH CREDIT CARD OPTION
I noticed that the line separating the inactive tab shouldn’t be there for Active Tab.
Minor flaw yet it spoiled my weekend
Second thing I noticed was the color of the inactive tab is more eye catchy than active tab, which lead to a confusion in my mind and When I wanted to switch to PAY BY CREDIT CARD MODE, I kept on clicking on the FUEL CARD tab without reading the tab title,thanks to the color of the inactive tab which looks like an Active Tab.
You call this poor Design of thecinema.in or my impatience,it took a lot of time for me to figure out the difference between the active and inactive tabs and I ended up booking the tickets for Transformers for Wednesday Matinee show.In order to compensate for the half day of work at office I burned my Sunday in my cubicle.(Remember there was no A/C on Sunday).
Hope Sathyamcinemas takes note of this simple yet weekend screwing design flaw and make lives easier.
Update: April 17,2010 I have done a storyboard that reflects my reaction to the website’s poor interface design:
Pinastro 